Open Calls

We have received a large number of proposals for all events, so we have a delay. If not before, then by Wednesday March 4th, all applicants will receive a reply from us. If this causes problems for you, please let us know! We apologize for this delay!

Call for Presentations

Critical Costume 2020: COSTUME AGENCY

Oslo National Academy of the Arts (KHIO), Norway

Workshops: 10-21 August 2020

Conference and Exhibition: 21 – 23 August 2020

We invite artists, researchers, scholars, designers to submit their proposals for workshop-, conference- and exhibition participation

Applications deadline: January 5th, 2020

“The veil is music because it is the artifice through which a body extends itself to engender forms into which it disappears.”

Jacques Rancière

In his essay the Dance of Light (2011)about Loie Fuller’s innovative dance practice, and poet Stéphane Mallarmé’s infatuation with it, Jacques Rancière gives special focus to the role of dress in a redefinition of avant-garde art. Following Mallarmé, Rancière calls the dress a veil, in order to uncover its potential and says that “(t)he veil is not only an artifice that enables one to imitate all sorts of forms. It also displays the potential of a body by hiding it. It is the supplement that the body gives itself to change its form and its function.” Here the dress of the dancer enables her to disappear, it enables the body to be dislocated and to change. This is why the ‘veil’ is the ‘music’. It is an agent that provides new realities of the body to emerge; it performs.

A garment in contemporary performance goes even beyond an agent activating abstract abilities of presence of the body on stage. Costume interacts with the other performance elements in extremely complex ways. It is a carrier of stories, executor of political activism, it becomes an embodiment of conceptual thinking, a critical questioning. Costume does not only perform via the body; it extends to space, landscape, and audience. It is an actor in itself. Costume is communication and communicated, it is a tool for research, it dances phenomenologically, it affects us kinesthetically. It is an agent. It is a force field. Costume performs. It does things. And the costume designer becomes director, thinker, researcher and shaman – constructing, deconstructing and reconstructing realities, different ways of being, into the ‘unthinkable’.

Critical Costume 2020 will focus on the agency of costume in performance, costume as the main performer and the costume designer as the initiator of performance. Following Costume Agency, a three-year artistic research project by Christina Lindgren (KHIO, Oslo) and Sodja Lotker (DAMU, Prague), Critical Costume 2020 will explore different ways in which costume performs, different genres and formats it initiates, but also specific dramaturgical strategies that are ingrained in costume, and are probably yet to be used to their full potential.

Critical Costume 2020 (CC 2020) at the Oslo National Academy of the Arts (KHIO) consists of workshops, a conference, and an art exhibition:

We invite costume designers, researchers, and other artists working with costume design as performance, as performative installation, as performative sculpture, as community gathering, as research, as a way of thinking, as a way to communicate, as music, as the bridge into the ‘unthinkable’ to submit their proposals.

CC2020 WORKSHOPS: August 10 – 21, 2020. Within four parallel workshops over the course of two weeks, designers and artists will have an opportunity to develop a performance from their already existing costumes and objects with local performers provided by the organizers. Each workshop will include rehearsals, dramaturgical consultations and group feedback sessions. The last day will offer a public presentation of workshop findings for the participants at Critical Costume 2020 Conference and Exhibition.

To apply for a workshop, please submit:

Presenter’s short bio up to 300 words.

Photo or drawings of your garments

Description of project up to 300 words: describe your visions for a performance embedded in the garments or/ and ideas for what to try out in the workshop.

Max. 4 images, video links, links to your website.

CC2020 CONFERENCE: August 21 – 23, 2020. CC2020 CONFERENCE will comprise scholarly and artistic presentations on current projects and/ or research. Presentations can have a multiplicity of formats: academic papers, artistic presentations, short interactive workshops, Flash Talks, video essays and other formats will be accepted. Presentations will vary from 5-20 minutes. The exact length of your presentation will be decided after the confirmation of your participation (based on the final program).

CC2020 EXHIBITION: August 21 – 23, 2020. CC2020 EXHIBITION will present artworks that focus on how costume shapes performance, where the costume initiates or is one of the main initiators of the performance. Please describe how a costume performs in your project, or how your proposed performance should be made accessible to the exhibition visitors (via text, video or other tools).

All proposals must be submitted via email to: criticalcostume2020@gmail.com

All proposals will be peer reviewed. We welcome you to submit your applications in more than one format.

DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSIONS

January 5th 2020

ANTICIPATED SCHEDULE

Notification of acceptance: February 15th, 2020

Applicants to confirm participation: March 15th, 2020

Preliminary program: April 2020

For conference – deadline for uploading the presentations: August 19th, 2020

For the exhibition – last date for the arrival of your artwork: August 19th, 2020

FEES

All delegates attending this 3-day event will need to a pay a registration fee, which will include catering. Significant discounts will be available for postgraduate researchers and independent artists. There will also be a 1-day registration option available. Each participant is responsible for their travel and boarding expenses.